Dubai: Internet giant Google has said the UAE and Saudi Arabia have become its two hottest emerging economies within the last year for mining new corporate customers.

For a company best known for its internet search engine, demand by corporations new and old is also growing daily for Google applications.

"We have 30,000 companies between the UAE and Saudi Arabia," said Abdul Wahid Bendaoua, Google's head of enterprise for Middle East, Africa and Eastern and Central Europe.

"The biggest growth we had in emerging markets was in Mena — in the UAE and Saudi Arabia."

Google's global enterprise division has a presence in 140 emerging countries.

In a media roundtable yesterday, Bendaoua said for proprietary reasons he couldn't publicly disclose the total number of customers Google has acquired within Middle East and North Africa. But he did say that since opening its own Dubai-based Google Enterprise division for emerging markets in September 2010, the business has exceeded original targets.

Of a global corporate roster of 4 million companies, 1.5 million of Google's client companies are based within the EMEA region.

As many as 5,000 new Google Apps corporate customers are signing on every day around the world for Google applications such as G-mail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Groups, Google Sites and Google Video for Business, Bendaoua said.

Leading the growth is the Mena region where major capital investment in IT by the private sector and governments is boosting information, communication and technology infrastructure.

Girard Mousa, Google enterprise sales for Mena, said efforts by Saudi Arabia's Mobily and the UAE's etisalat and du to launch faster fourth-generation (4G) broadband services will only help foster a growth environment in the ICT sector.

Customers who "get access to bandwidth" are keen to use new business applications that can help get businesses off the ground and keep them there.

Bendaoua added that big or small, the cost to corporations to move to Google Apps services is the same per capita regardless of the size.